When it comes to your health,”the future ain’t what it used to be”

I’m delighted to be a new member of the Times Union Holistic Health Blog. I’m closing in on 30 years since graduating from medical school and while our health care system is often an unwieldy behemoth, I have never been more inspired to share all I can in the spirit of health and self-care.

My formal training is in Internal medicine and nephrology (kidney problems and severe high blood pressure). Partnering with many people through the years has been an honor and a gift. As Bernie Siegel once said to me, we (us healers) are the tourists. You (those we serve) are the natives. I find myself a very curious tourist these days, interested more in the landscape of nutrition, movement, mindfulness, and social connection, than I am in powerful pharmaceuticals.

We live in an extraordinary time of scientific insight, highlighted by the converging disciplines of genomics, nutrigenomics, mind-body science (the neurosciences) and environmental toxicology. The story emerging from these unprecedented insights is one that sheds a very different context on who we are and how we function. It is a story that looks and feels very different than one I have been taught through traditional allopathic education and have clung to with unrelenting trust for much of my life.

In truth, your genes, my genes, and everyone’s genes are remnants of a stone-age imperative. This ancient and wonderful “Book of Life” is unfortunately not well suited for 21st century living i.e., the foods we eat, insufficient movement, sleep deprivation, unrelenting stress, frequent conflict, environmental toxins, loneliness, social isolation, cigarettes, etc.

Understanding the fundamental significance of this design-environmental input disconnect is the essence of effective self-care. An awareness of how this disconnect plays out in our lives can lead to profound change, better health, and vitality.

I look forward to sharing more about this in future blogs.

For those who may be interested, I have a web site (www.savvypatient) that has more information about my background and some important health information.

It is quite clear that our capacity as human beings to adapt profoundly throughout our lives to changes in our environmental inputs is greater than ever imagined! This is a story of hope. This is a story of possibility. And as one great Yogi from the 20th century reminds us…”the future ain’t what it used to be.”